Chapter 40: Convenient Discovery.
Leslie rubbed the shallow cut on her cheek, when her hand came away stained with blood, she instinctively tried to cry out in fear, but only an incomprehensible sound escaped her mouth.
The blizzard finally descended in full force.
Snow and freezing wind battered them without mercy, relentlessly slowing Leslie’s human body as frost gradually crept across her exposed skin.
Damien and his undead, on the other hand, were only mildly inconvenienced.
They didn’t slow down.
Priesty especially suddenly picked up speed. Even among the Eidolons, he had always been larger and stronger than the rest. The only reason Yuri managed to kill him in a single strike was because luck, coincidence and his own arrogance had aligned perfectly against him.
The worsening visibility finally became Leslie’s undoing.
Her foot caught beneath the snow, sending her tumbling across the frozen ground. She scrambled back to her feet almost immediately, but by then it was already too late.
Priesty was upon her.
The ritual staff swept toward her head with terrifying force.
Leslie crossed both short daggers above her head and barely managed to block the strike. The impact numbed both arms before violently launching her several meters through the air.
She rolled across the snow before forcing herself upright. It hurt, but that had been part of her plan, she had willingly taken the hit just to create more distance.
"Fuck you, Damien! If I survive this, I’ll make the rest of your life a living hell!"
Nearly a hundred meters behind her, Damien blinked innocently, then answered as though they were simply old friends having a casual conversation.
"Leslie, love... you won’t be surviving me."
The chase continued.
Damien loosed arrow after arrow, several dozen in total, but the raging wind kept knocking them off course before they could ever reach Leslie, even the few that came close only disappeared into the blizzard moments later.
After the last arrow vanished into the storm, Damien finally gave up on trying to kill her from a distance.
Instead, he focused on the faint connection linking him to Priesty.
The undead was steadily gaining on Leslie, and it was only a matter of time before they pinned her down.
Damien grabbed the handle of his axe and sped up, ignoring the sharp cold cutting through the air.
Leslie could no longer keep running through the blizzard, and she knew it.
Her body had already been approaching its limit by the time they first encountered the Eidolon army. Since then, she had fought, fled and forced herself through the freezing storm without a single moment to recover.
Damien was different, his body was undead.
Fatigue barely existed for him. Every second the chase dragged on only pushed Leslie closer to collapse, while Damien continued pursuing her with the same steady pace he had maintained from the very beginning.
...
Priesty burst through the curtain of snow and swung the ritual staff horizontally.
Leslie immediately dropped to one knee, the staff screaming over her head as it snapped a frozen tree clean in half behind her, before Priesty could recover, she slid beneath its arm and slashed both hamstrings in a single motion.
Then she planted a foot against its back and kicked herself away, widening the distance once again.
Just as she turned to run, a black-furred undead erupted from the blizzard.
Its claws shot straight for her throat.
Leslie twisted her body sideways, the claws grazing across her shoulder instead. She caught the creature’s wrist with one dagger, drove the second beneath its jaw and ripped upward before using its collapsing body as a stepping stone.
[Your undead has fallen]
Damien scowled in annoyance.
"She’s at a disadvantage and still killing my undead, where’s this unusual physical strength coming from, could it be her status that’s making her strong or is her body as strong as the clones she makes".
Damien could remember how many swings of his axe it took to break her head back in the Eidolon tent, an ordinary human body would have died from a single swing, but she kept trying to pry for information even while having her head gradually opened by his axe.
...
Leslie’s feet barely touched the snow, and another undead was already upon her.
It lunged without hesitation.
Her figure spun, both daggers colliding against its claws before she slipped underneath its guard and carved open its stomach. She didn’t bother waiting to see if it fell. Her body was already moving again.
Behind her, Priesty had somehow recovered from its injuries, something even more terrifying was happening.
The undead priest rhythmically tapped the frozen ground with its ritual staff. Each dull thud echoed through the blizzard. The deep wounds covering the undead Eidolon’s stomach gradually began closing before Leslie’s eyes.
Even Damien, only a few leaps behind them, was stunned.
He had no idea Priesty’s healing ability still worked after becoming undead, much less that it could heal his other undead as well.
Then it finally clicked.
That also explained why Priesty had always returned fully recovered whenever Damien resummoned him after the battle in the Ruins of Humanity. It hadn’t been his dormant ability restoring him, Priesty had been healing himself all along.
Damien smirked coldly.
"Well this is convenient".
Priesty’s ritual staff slammed into the ground, snow exploded skyward.
The shockwave caught Leslie squarely in the back, throwing her forward across the frozen ground.
She rolled twice before forcing herself upright, the two undead were no longer chasing from behind, they had already surrounded her.
Before Leslie could even react, Damien had already caught up. He doubled over, panting and coughing as though chasing after her was the hardest thing he’d done since coming back from the dead.
"Wow, Leslie. Quite the runner ain’t we". He brought his palms together. "Now then, how about you stop resisting and we could come to an arrangement, me and you, you tell me everything about your sister’s dormant ability and any sub uses if any, let’s not forget her status effect that could come in handy, what do you say love?".